The Notion of Not Paying Taxes Being Smart

Like most people I was watching the US presidential debate yesterday where for me it’s more out of curiosity since I don’t live in the US. I think the moment that caught my attention the most was when Clinton made a comment about Trump potentially hiding things like his tax returns as he doesn’t want to show that he doesn’t say pay federal taxes or something like that. He then responded with a remark saying how that makes him smart and that definitely generated a lot of buzz.

On one side you have people saying Trump is like a con artist as a result where he is taking advantage of laws in a bad way to get more money. On the other hand you could read comments of people saying it’s stupid to not take advantage of laws to get as much money as you can for your business and personal life. So that kind of begs the question, is avoiding taxes in a legal way smart even though one might be abusing a privilege that wasn’t intended to be used in such a way?

Stuff like this is why there is often so many contradictory advice when it comes to money in life. For example, on one end people would teach you that in business if it’s legal and all then you should use everything to your advantage as it is about increasing that bottom line. However, then there is the ethical side where you know something is being abused. So which answer is the right one here?

In some ways I wouldn’t doubt that if you are going to like an accountant for advice that it’s probably not too farfetched that they would try to think of everything to help you get more money. Then again, it’s kind of like the stories I hear on how say large companies actually setup bank accounts and divisions in different countries just for the purpose of not having to pay taxes. Like there I wouldn’t doubt it would be legal in whatever way they were doing it but it is sure as heck sketchy.